Who’s the hottest of them all?

19th November 2009 by Juanita

So People magazine reckons Pirates Of The Caribbean star Johnny Depp is the sexiest man alive.

I think it’s because he plays a bad boy so well - and we all know how women love those…

Depp beat Hugh Jackman for the position. Jackman’s not half bad.

Thank goodness those Twilight boys didn’t even get a look-in…

What would your choice be?

Who rules the pretty roost in the Twilight zone?

17th November 2009 by Renee Moodie

Later this week, if you are keen, you can go and see a midnight preview of The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

Previews are set for Nu Metro Cinemas on Friday (November 20). The film is also scheduled for sneak 5.30pm previews from Sunday, November 22, until Thursday, November 26, at select Nu Metro Cinemas.  The film  releases nationally on Friday November 27.

And the question on everybody’s mind is this: will rising star Taylor Lautner really eclipse Robert Pattinson? Tonight has carried some stories on the subject (Taylor rises in New Moon, and Move over Rob, there’s a new hunk in town): who gets your vote as the prettiest?

Darren a deserving winner?

13th November 2009 by Renee Moodie

Durban’s Darren Rajbal has danced away with the SA’s Got Talent first prize.

Read the story on Tonight, see the picture gallery… and then tell us if you think the right person won.

Opinion at IOL is divided: Darren fans are ecstatic, and there are those who were rooting for George…

SA’s Got Talent: who is going to win?

12th November 2009 by Renee Moodie

Tonight is the final of SA’s Got Talent. The contenders are:

• Kalon Badenhorst, the twelve-year-old hip hop/contemporary dancer, from Johannesburg
• Singers Willem and Louis Van Der Merwe, from Stellenbosch
• Beat boxer George Avakian, from Johannesburg
• Guitarist Louwtjie Rothman, from Cape Town
• Hearing-impaired hip hop dancer Darren Rajbal, from Durban
• Eight-year-old singer Cleo Filander,  from Vereeniging

SA’s Got Talent fanatics in the IOL office are rooting for Darren… Who gets your vote?

Joost’s to-do list

5th November 2009 by Renee Moodie

So, call me extra cynical, but this is the list that former Springbok Joost van der Westhuizen keeps in his top pocket…

1. Deny everything about bad video. If that doesn’t work, go to point 2.

2. Stage dramatic and public stress-related collapse to see if public sympathy gets any better. If  doesn’t work, go to point 3.

3. Write book and confess all (book will make enough money to offset risks of other lost income). Make sure all media get their hands on the book.  Amor to stand by man.

So far so good. Now, what else is on that list?

4. Go to ground for a while.

5. Appear in public on a meaningful day (Christmas, Easter, something like that). (Memo to self: Check when Ray McCauley has a free day in the Rhema Church).  Do handwringing and footwashing and offering self to Lord. Ask everyone for forgiveness - the nation, Amor, the children.

6. If image restored, ask for Supersport job back.

7. Oh and … remember to pay the spin doctor.

Background articles:

Joost’s stripper was not the first - report

‘Joost ripped out my heart’

Joost: Why I lied

I could lose my family, says Joost

Who wants that red carpet experience?

5th November 2009 by Renee Moodie

Reuters has released a package of photographs entitled Red Carpet Nightmares of 2009.

We thought it deserved a picture gallery - and we went further and found some South African celebs who should have known better.

Tell us who gets your vote for the worst outfit!

Reitz 4 ‘pardon’: In defence of Prof Jansen’s decision

3rd November 2009 by Juanita

By Dr Colleen Aldous

Professor Jonathan Jansen has demonstrated a form of emotional intelligence that South Africans should be looking to as being exemplary. As a South Africa however, I hang my head in shame and disappointment, as I did when the Reitz racial incident occurred. Because instead of being him being revered and held in high esteem for the commitments he made in his inauguration speech, an oration that should go down in history as one of the greatest orations of our time, too many South Africans are currently in a vitriolic confusion, calling for his resignation as Vice-Chancellor of the University and threatening to make the campus ungovernable. It is sad that the efforts of Bishop Desmond Tutu through the Truth and Reconciliation Committees of the nineties have been so short-lived in their effects.

Bishop Tutu has however come out in praise of Professor Jansen pointing out that ‘forgiveness is not for sissies’. Professor Jansen has never been a sissie. As the first black Dean of a Faculty at the University of Pretoria, he set about changing blanket racial perceptions by setting an academic standard higher than had ever been set in his Faculty. He required of his faculty excellence beyond that which they had ever been expected to achieve. But he did not only set those standards, he demonstrated that they could be achieved. He, himself, achieved every academic goal that he set his faculty in terms of research output and publications while still delivering important social commentary in the press and running his faculty. At the beginning of his tenure as the Dean of the Faculty of Education, few people knew he was black, and his name gave no indication that he would be anything but a white Afrikaner. He would arrive at engagements to alarmed white faces and would set a
bout challenging their prejudices and converting so many racially prejudiced whites, particularly Afrikaners, into true South Africans who had no reverence for racial divide. He did this alone – he is not a sissie.

During these years, which for many could be likened to his years of being Daniel in the lion’s den, Professor Jansen also undertook to understand the complexities of white racial prejudice. He would hear stories from white students about how they had been victims of crime, crime they implied emanated exclusively from blacks. He would then tell them of crimes where his grandfather’s farm was taken from him by whites, amongst others inflicted by whites. Both he and the students got to learn of the hardships all have experienced at the hands of other people, sometimes from another race. The culmination of such discussions was the smudging of the lines between race and victimization. Professor Jansen wrote his new knowledge up in the book Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid past. A must read for any South African who truly wants to understand our South African community dynamic.

If any South African understands the root of racial tension today, it is Jonathan Jansen. His experience, his intelligence, his strong sense of justice and the courage of his convictions has lead him to carry out one of the most remarkable acts of reconciliation we have seen this century in South Africa. He knows what he is doing and I hope he is left alone long enough for him to achieve his ultimate aim. If there be any sensibility in our land we will allow Prof Jansen to help knit our people into a single nation while preserving the diversity of our cultural treasures. His critics and detractors do not understand that the only true forgiveness is unconditional forgiveness. Anything less will not hold ground.

Dr Colleen Aldous
Research Fellow
Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA)
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine

Waiting is over for MJ fans

28th October 2009 by Renee Moodie

The documentary about Michael Jackson, This Is It, has been seen worldwide in 15 different screenings - and there were a bunch in South Africa.

Did you go? What did you think of the movie? If you couldn’t face that 2am start, will you be going?

If not, why not? There are a bunch of people who are boycotting the film as they say it covers up the grim truth about the star’s last days…

Theresa Smith went to the movie - and was very impressed.

Tell us what you think!

What’s your favourite vampire movie?

22nd October 2009 by Renee Moodie

Over on the Tonight site, we’ve got a vampire thing going.

There’s a good feature about Robert Pattinson (am I the only person in the world who doesn’t think he’s sexy?), there’s a review of  a True Blood DVD, and Tonight film writer Theresa Smith is sharing, along with a sh**load of videos.

Her favourite vampire movie at the moment? It’s Swedish film Lat Den Ratte Komma In, which she says has a combination of amazing use of light and mesmerising music which make for fascinating viewing.

As for me,  my heart belongs to Buffy.

What gets your blood flowing?

Beards are back in fashion…

16th October 2009 by Renee Moodie

A Tonight story says that a recent survey of more than 2 000 men and women conducted by Lynx unearthed some conclusively anti-beard statistics.

While 63 percent of men believed facial hair made them more manly and attractive, 92 percent of women said they preferred a clean-shaven man, with 95 percent complaining that facial stubble made a romantic kiss a turn-off. And a huge 86 percent said they found beards unattractive.

So men like beards (and they are, apparently, fashionable, again) and women don’t.  At IOL, we felt a picture gallery coming on… Check out our pic of the good, bad and ugly in beards, and tell us what you think…